


just waiting for a 90-mile water wall to take me out of your view

by perennial



Category: Days of Heaven (1978), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Character Death Fix, Crossover, Days of Heaven AU, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 00:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16565687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: "He's got a year to live, if that.""Oh, poor man.""I think you ought to accept.""Accept…""Accept his offer. Go to supper. Let him fall in love with you. Marry him. When he dies he'll leave everything to you."





	just waiting for a 90-mile water wall to take me out of your view

**Author's Note:**

> _so how could your hair have the nerve to dance around like that, blowing?_  
>  _and how could the air have the nerve to blow your hair around like that?_  
> [{the national}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1DERCNG_l8)
> 
> disclaimer #1: I love Tony Stark. Irl I ship Pepper x Tony until my last breath. But sometimes a pre-WWI American West movie AU plot bunny takes hold and does not let go until written out, and thus your favorite cyborg bazillionaire has to turn into a major douchebag.  
> disclaimer #2: I love Pepper Potts. Irl I want to be her. But sometimes pre-WWI American West farm AUs make it hard to keep your favorite Avenger in character. I did not anticipate how hard it would be to throw her into this story - primarily because Abby is a passive character and Pepper isn't. I gave it my all.

It isn't as though she didn't see this coming. Tony has killed three men already and it was only a matter of time before there was a fourth. An accident, but the police don't know Tony like Pepper does and so getting out of Chicago becomes an immediate necessity.

She would have put money on Canada so it's a surprise when he announces they're going south. The money is easier. He's tired of the cold. Natasha has never been to the southern half of the continent; his little sister should see more of her own country. Natasha reminds him she was born in Tennessee.

They can only afford to ride on the roof of the train, but at least the rainy season is over. The sun beams down through a cloud-strewn sky and burns Pepper's fair skin pink within an hour. They lurch their way through Illinois to Missouri, whose hills roll like an ocean, into Oklahoma, where there are more shades of blue and green than she ever dreamed existed.

The train chugs into Texas and stops. Pepper sits up and thinks _oh_.

Texas, with its rolling hills and bluebonnets and creekbeds. Texas, with its horizon full of nothing but sky. She could love a place like this.

Tony does not hide his disappointment. Four months, he vows, no longer. He starts talking about New Orleans. Pepper recalls promises made prior to New York and Chicago and she mentally subtracts a month. Barely a season, then—if the police don't find him first.

They tell people they're brother and sister, and everyone seems to accept it, though Tony and she look nothing alike and she doesn't bear an ounce of resemblance to Natasha. It will be safer, he tells her. An unmarried man and a woman traveling together begs the question of what they're getting up to when no one is looking. She wants to ask why they can't just pretend they're married, but it will only start an argument and she doesn't have the energy.

There is harvest work to be had at a number of surrounding farms and Tony, being Tony, manages to nose out the one with the best pay. They give their names to the foreman and he tells them wages are paid every two weeks. He points out the fallow field where laborer tents are staked out. They haven't got a tent, only blankets, and Pepper anticipates a flood of complaints from Tony, who likes his creature comforts; but the night is mild and they are all happy to be off the train. She starts a mental tally. Nights of peace: one.

They cross the field in the darkening twilight. Tony pulls her close. "You love me?"

Hasn't she fled across the whole country with him? What more proof does he want?

He leans in for a kiss and she swats him away. "Be careful! Try to remember I'm your sister."

He grins and starts a game of tag with Natasha, who runs shrieking with laughter away from him over the dark Texas dirt.

-

The sun falls generously over orderly rows of golden wheat. Pepper holds her face up to the light, up to the breeze. She has spent her life surrounded by concrete and smoke. There seems to be no end of wonders in this place: the sky bluer than she thought blue could ever be, the white clouds drifting across its expanse, the crumbling brown soil beneath her feet birthing an abundance of perfectly-formed seed-topped plants, swaying stalks housing a trove of mice and insects and birds.

The work bores Tony. If they are thrown off the farm it will be because of Tony, who assured the foreman that they are experienced in this kind of work and is now laboring half as fast as the other men.

"Give me some of yours," he tells Pepper. And she would tell him off if it would make a difference, but he isn't going to work faster and she doesn't want to leave, so when no one is looking she adds some of her haul to his sack. He smiles at her, that smile that lights up his whole handsome face, the one that's just for her, and she finds herself forgiving him a little more quickly than she intended to.

Natasha is making friends; it warms Pepper's heart all the way through to witness it. She's an old soul already, made older by her complete absence of childhood; this is the first time Pepper has seen her so carefree. She's getting color in her cheeks and a spring in her step.

It is Natasha who susses out who the tall man in gentleman's garb is, who sits and watches them from a couch set next to a gramophone on a hill overlooking the field. "Farmer Rogers," she tells them, "and he's got gobs of money. Four straight years of good harvests and this will be the fifth. All the land you can see is his."

Tony is unimpressed. "Is he going to sit on his ass and watch us for the next two months?" he says, and Pepper can see the first spark of jealousy flare in his eyes.

It only builds the evening they see a wagon drop off a large wooden box that is broken open to reveal a tubular structure carefully packed in straw. The farmer invites the workers to look through it. He tells them they'll be able to see the stars even closer, and planets too. Natasha darts through the crowd to get a peek. Pepper forces herself to stay next to Tony; this is not a fight she feels like starting.

"Look at him. Got so much money he doesn't know what to do with it, buys himself a telescope. What's a farmer going to do with a telescope? Meanwhile we've still got nothing! He might have given us that money, if he was going to throw it away like that!"

Pepper keeps silent. There is no use talking with Tony when he is in this mood. She could agree with every word he says and he would take umbrage.

After a few days the couch disappears and the farmer joins them in the fields. Word circulates that he was ill, hence the couch, and is now recovered. Pepper wonders what kind of man can be so sick he can't work but still insists on sitting at the edge of the field, monitoring the harvest being brought in.

The farmer cannot boast many more years than she can, perhaps fewer. He has blue eyes and can haul a hundred-pound hay bale on his own. According to field hand gossip, he is unmarried.

"He's looking at you," says Tony.

She is well aware the farmer is looking at her. Her primary aim where Farmer Rogers is concerned is to make sure he doesn't think she is looking back.

-

The farmer is kind, she learns. It is a trait that would be hard to miss. He helps the youngest workers bring in their haul. He is an endless fount of encouragement and praise and appreciation. He likes to sing while he works, boisterous work songs that are as fun to sing as listen to, and sooner or later everyone around him has joined in. He has a smile for every worker he sees or speaks to.

One evening he asks her if she'd be interested in joining him for supper. He's big, close up like this—wider and taller than he seemed from a distance. He ducks his head and his eyes are shy, but his smile is so kind and honest that she doesn't have the heart to turn him down on the spot. She makes an excuse about finding her brother and escapes.

-

Tony chews a blade of grass, pensive.

"Saw something today."

"Hm?" she says absently, her attention on mending a hole in Natasha's spare skirt.

"A note. Doctor's note. Said the farmer's mighty sick."

She looks up. "Sick?"

"He's got a year to live, if that."

"Oh, poor man."

"I think you ought to accept."

"Accept…"

"Accept his offer. Go to supper. Let him fall in love with you. Marry him. When he dies he'll leave everything to you."

"You can't be serious."

"We could use that money, Pep. You know as well as I do that what we're making here won't last long."

"It's vile. It's a nasty, vile, evil thing to do."

"What's he gonna do, take it with him? He hasn't got kids, he hasn't got anybody. No family. Except you."

"You're out of your mind."

Tony sits up. "Pepper, he'll make you a queen. Of all this. Look! All this land. _Ours_."

Her gaze follows the spread of his arm, and for a moment she is sucked into the fantasy of what it would be like to be the mistress, caretaker, steward of these golden hills, this silver cricketsong, this gentle night breeze.

"What if you're wrong? What if he doesn't die?"

His eyes brighten and she curses inwardly. He's hooked her far in enough to have her posing hypotheticals, and he's going to try to reel her in enough to land her.

"Seemed like a certain thing. 'Settle your affairs' and all that."

"I can't. I can't do it him. He's too kind, and I don't feel anything for him."

"It's no sin to marry someone you don't love. It _is_ a sin to let bounty go to waste. He dies, all this goes back to the bank. Unless he gives it to you. We could have a real home, Pep. An actual roof over our heads."

"It would be cruel."

"What's he have to know the truth for? You won't tell him!"

"You're presuming he'll want to marry me."

"I've seen him look at you the way a man looks at something he wants."

She frowns at the skirt and needle but her eyes are fixed on some distant future. "Has it occured to you that he'll expect me to bed him?"

"So fend him off."

"Fend him off?" she repeats in disbelief. "Maybe no one told you, Tony, but this is what people do when they're married. They consummate their marriage. And if they like each other even a little bit, they do it again. And again, and again, until they have a house full of children."

He says dismissively, "So you'll have to sleep with him a few times. He doesn't have to know it doesn't mean anything."

Pepper gapes.

She loves this man. She has given over her whole heart into his keeping.

And this is what he would do with her heart.

And this is what he would do with her body.

She says calmly, "I suppose if the situation were reversed—the farmer were a woman, that is—that you wouldn't hesitate."

"Course not. Not when these are the stakes."

"I see."

In its space within her chest, the bright flame in her heart erupts and overwhelms the pulsing blood and tissue. The flare scorches and consumes. It burns when she looks at him, it burns when he looks back at her, it burns through the space between them. It burns when they tell the plan to Natasha, who is smart and knows how to keep her mouth shut; there's no telling what trouble might come if they leave her in the dark. It burns as she makes the long walk up to the farmhouse and all the way through supper seated opposite Farmer Rogers, whose given name is Steve.

It burns as she is buttoned by Natasha into her wedding dress, it burns as she is escorted by her so-called brother through the parlor to meet her groom where he stands beside the parson. It burns her tongue as she says her vows and swallows the wedding supper.

These early autumn days die slowly and it is late when the guests leave. Steve's guests are a motley group: his doctor, his foreman, a handful of others whose connections to him she forgets as soons as she is told. She only has Tony and Natasha. It takes ocular acrobatics to avoid meeting Tony's eye, but she manages. The door closes behind them and she is alone.

 _Husband_. She had wanted to marry Tony. Now the word sounds like a key turning in a lock.

Steve takes her by the hand and leads her upstairs. The master suite is a lovely room, made of pine wood and tastefully decorated. She holds the cloth to her chest as he unbuttons her dress. In the mirror she sees him lift his hands to her pinned-up hair. She moves away before he can touch it—carefully timed so that he won't think she knew what his intent was—and steps toward the dressing screen.

"Do you love me?"

She looks at him, startled. "You never said I had to."

"You don't. I only… Never mind."

He is sitting on the bed when she emerges. Her hair is loose and she has traded her wedding lace for a nightgown—a modest thing prettier than anything she has ever owned.

Pepper goes to his side of the bed and sits close. She looks up at him. His hair is falling into his blue eyes.

He says, "You want to do this? Even though you don't love me? I understand if you don't."

She almost laughs aloud. Tony sure knows how to pick them. Then she sobers instantly upon remembering that she must secure her inheritance.

She moves over to him, positioning herself nearly in his lap. She kisses him as sweetly as she knows how. He responds, pulling her closer to him and deepening the kiss.

It is odd to do this with someone other than Tony. She doesn't know Steve's body or his signals. He doesn't know hers.

For all that, he is a gentle lover. Considerate. Controlled. She has reason to believe he has little to no experience in lovemaking, but they go slowly, and he holds her with a tenderness unmistakably born of love, and it wipes away any consideration of previous encounters.

-

She is woken by birdsong.

All the edges of the room are softened in the pale pre-dawn. There is a warm, heavy arm slung over her waist.

Pepper looks at the man stretched out beside her, whose face is serene in sleep, and is aware that her burning heart is as cool and calm as ash.

-

Life with Steve isn't what she expected. She isn't sure what she expected.

He takes Natasha and Tony out of the fields. He moves Natasha into the farmhouse, where she walks around slack-jawed for days over the plush carpets and seemingly endless supply of food. Tony he moves into a vacant cabin among the overseers and provides a bottomless supply of cigars.

He buys all of them new clothes. They bathe on a regular basis and wear shoes at all times except when sleeping. He cannot seem to stop buying presents for Pepper—jewelry and trinkets and watercolors and beads, none of which she knows much what to do with. She allows it because it makes him happy, and she is commissioned to make him happy.

Tony and Natasha join them for supper every night. Tony likes to preside over these meals, regaling the farmer with accounts of his business acumen and feats of strength. It takes Pepper two whole weeks to realize that Steve listens to Tony's tall tales not because he believes them but for her sake.

Tony struts around in his new clothes likes he's been crowned king of the farm, but he's restless and jealous and does little to hide it. He doesn't like being kept by another man, though he'll stoop to accept Steve's gifts. "Someday I'll have those overseer cabins torn down," he tells Pepper, and it sends a chill down her spine. She never remembers Steve is dying until Tony says something. Tony never forgets.

There are moments when the deception is too much or she is overwhelmed by this new life she has stepped into, and those are the times she is glad Tony is close at hand. She draws comfort from his familiar presence, from knowing how to talk to him, from knowing what he is going to say before he says it. There is no guessing or awkwardness or pretense. She knows all his moods and he knows hers.

And there are moments when she thinks Tony doesn't want her to adjust and is doing everything he can to prevent it.

Gradually, gradually, she takes charge of the house: choosing the supper menu. Deciding where new art pieces will be hung or where furniture ought to be moved. Tending the kitchen garden. Selecting bedroom hangings more to Natasha's taste. Adding vases of flowers around the place. Naturally thrifty and endowed with rather more business acumen than her paramour, she takes over the household finances and cuts costs in half. Steve, impressed, gifts her the remainder, and she has him put it in a trust for Natasha.

The house is full of her husband's songs. She wakes to them in the morning. She can locate him at any time of day. He sings hymns and pub songs, children's rhymes and wordless symphonies. His voice becomes as familiar a noise as the whirring cicadas.

"You like him," says Tony, accusing. Pepper doesn't answer.

She and Natasha make cold lemonade and bring it to the field workers. Steve strolls up to the cart where she is serving to give her a clutch of wildflowers, and she weaves them into her hair. He smiles down at her and her stomach does an odd flip.

On Sundays he takes her on drives through the countryside. Pepper has only been in a car twice before and it is as exhilarating as riding a horse. She likes the way her insides seem to hang in space when they fly down a hill. She likes the wind catching in her hair. She likes the layer of dust on his face that cuts off at the clean line of his driving goggles and makes his eyes look even bluer.

She teaches Steve her full arsenal of card games. Neither of them are particularly competitive, but Natasha is, and she likes to sass Steve until he morphs into a worthy opponent. The card table becomes a heated battlefield that causes them to forget more than one meal, as well as birthing an unshakable devotion in Natasha. "He's the best person in the whole world," she informs Pepper, who doesn't need to be told.

She begins to avoid Tony; he is a living reminder of her lies. She is sick to her stomach when she thinks about what they have done. About what they are doing.

She didn't think much of the farmer's face upon first meeting him. It grows on her—his honest blue eyes, his Texas-browned skin, his full, expressive mouth, his generous humor. He is handsome in an altogether new way from what she is accustomed to considering handsome. She is aware of a little leap of happiness in her chest every time she makes him smile.

-

She can see him in her dressing table mirror. Her eyes follow him as he moves around the room—emptying his pockets, dimming the lamp on the bureau. She watches the ripple of his shoulderblades under his shirt. There is no harm in looking, she tells herself.

Except that he catches her. He turns and meets her eyes in the mirror. A slow, knowing smile spreads across his face.

Pepper ducks her head, fussing with the objects scattered over the vanity top.

She can hear him crossing the room. She can feel him at her back.

His breath is warm on her skin. His lips press into the curve at the base of her neck and she shivers. He kisses her there again, and again, until her head is lolling back against him. He finds the hem of her nightgown and reaches under it. He runs both his hands up over her bare skin and she gasps in surprise combined with sudden, blinding heat.

She twists around in her seat and reaches for him, rising to her knees and winding her arms around his shoulders. His searching mouth finds hers and she opens hers to the hot slide of his tongue. She reaches down to tug his shirt free from his trousers. The skin of his abdomen is warm and firm.

He picks her up and carries her to the bed, and for some time following the only things that exist in the world are him and her and them.

-

Life is simple. Sweet. Happy.

He teaches her to play the piano. He'll play simple duets with her, humming along with the clinking keys, sitting so that he is pressed right up against her on the piano bench, warming her like a fire.

He turns on the gramophone and waltzes around the house with her and Natasha, whirling them round until they are crying with laughter.

They take turns reading aloud at night on the porch with his head in her lap while the crickets sing.

He climbs into the tub while she is bathing despite her shrieks of protest about the water cascading over the side, and kisses her until she is limp in his arms.

He shows her a map of the world and points to all the places he wants to show her, asks her where she wants to go. She looks up country after country in his encyclopedias and makes a list as long as her arm. When he sees it he starts laughing and says they had better start the preparations, then. And she remembers, a knifethrust into her golden happiness, that he is sick. That he will be dead before they set foot on the ocean liner. And then she looks again—at his face flushed with life, his body brimming with energy—and she wonders.

She kisses him awake while the dawn colors are still staining the sky. He wraps his warmth around her and they make love in the soft morning light, as he whispers against her skin. How beautiful she is. How happy he is. How she fills up his heart.

-

Tony says, "Think it's time we move on."

Pepper stares at him. Natasha says, "We can't."

"Of course we can. And we are. Tomorrow morning."

"Pepper's married to Steve."

He's sarcastic: "And no married woman ever left her husband before."

Pepper says, "Leave, Natasha."

This ignites noisome protest, but eventually the girl vanishes around the corner of the barn door, sulking.

"He isn't getting sicker, Pep. It's a bust. Time to cut our losses and get out. Pack whatever valuables he gave you, and you and Nat meet me here tonight at midnight."

Pepper's voice is steady. "I won't be doing that, Tony."

He gapes at her, then makes a little sound in his chest that might be a laugh. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm done. I'm tired. Of backbreaking labor, of up and leaving everything we worked so hard for, of wondering when my life will finally be worth anything. This is my home now."

She watches the flames climb high in his eyes. "What about me? What am I supposed to do without you?"

"I suppose you'll figure it out."

They fight. She keeps her composure and he loses his. He storms around the barn and throws his hat and punches haybales.

Then it's over. He turns to her and she is relieved to see the resignation in his eyes. He has accepted defeat. He isn't going to make a scene up at the house.

He takes her hand and holds it as gently as he used to, back when she knew she was precious to him, back when he was her world.

"You've always been worth everything to me, Pepper." His eyes are dark and soft in the light of the oil lamp.

He pulls her to him and lifts her chin with his fingertips. He draws her mouth to his and lingers on her lips. She lets him because this is goodbye. It is strange, this kiss: the culmination of their life together. Hardly a season ago such a thing would have been unfathomable.

She hears a crash of glass and whirls around to find Steve standing in the barn doorway, a shattered lantern at his feet.

-

Tony takes to his heels. Pepper wishes she could be so lucky. Anything would be better than having to face her pale, livid husband. He hasn't spoken a word yet.

Now they stand at opposite sides of the bedroom. She clenches her hands so tightly the nails dig into her palms. Steve is very still, staring at her with a maelstrom raging in his eyes.

His voice is tight. "Who is he to you?"

"He has nothing to do with us—"

"Seems he has plenty to do with us."

Her eyes are welling up. She can't speak, only looks at him.

His red-rimmed eyes are furious. "How could you do this?"

She is still too overwhelmed to know what to say. Her mind is in panic; her ability to function in a crisis has frozen somewhere between her shoulderblades.

She watches as he withdraws, tries to shutter up his emotion, speaks distantly—"Why did you do it?" He studies her and answers his own question. "You want my money."

"He does."

"He does. Not you." He's sarcastic.

"I wanted the farm. I've loved this land since I first saw it." If she's honest about all of it, maybe it will lead them back to the start. She can repair what she has broken. He'll stay.

"Sure you do. How many lies? Pepper?" His fury is white-hot. "How many times have you slept with him since marrying me?"

She stares at him.

"Has he been in this bed?"

" _No_."

He turns away and says, white lipped, "Get out of my house."

"I'll go—I'll go. But please. Steve, please let me explain." Her voice shakes from need, with the urgency that he understand. "Tony, he's… he can be very persuasive, you've heard him. He can make a person be willing to do a thing they'd otherwise never consider doing. He said you were sick." She says it viciously, choking. "He said you were dying, that the money would go to waste, just like paper burning. But if we had it, if we could get it, it would help us. And oh, stars, Steve, did we need help! We're always needing help. I think I was born desperate."

He runs a hand over his face, all angry energy, but it's to mask the agony that she can feel hemorrhaging from him like a broken pipe. He won't look at her.

"And you—you said you loved me. It didn't seem like a bad thing, to try to make you happy, seeing as you would be dead soon." His head is bowed; it takes all her control to stay on her side of the room instead of running across take his face in her hands and make his eyes meet hers. "I thought it would be easy, being married to you—to be rich, and sit in the shade, and eat three meals a day. And you were _sick_. But then you—you—" Her voice breaks. "You were _kind_. You _are_ kind. In a way I'd never seen before. It crept up on me and got… got inside. And the guilt's been sitting in my chest so tight I could hardly breathe these last months."

"Good," he says.

"I had bad intentions, I own to it. Disgraceful. And I'd undo every single part of what I've done if I could, except for the part that gave me you."

His voice is low and final. "I am not yours."

She cries, "Are you dying or not?"

He looks at her.

Her eyes are bright with unshed tears. "I have to know. Are you dying?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"I don't care about the money. Don't give me another penny. Cut me out of your will. Do whatever you have to do for proof. Test me however you want. I _love_ you," she says, tears streaming down her face, "with parts of my heart I didn't know existed before we met. It's soaked _through_." She is congested and lightheaded, he has to know, he has to hear. "Please forgive me for all the pain I'm causing you. I'm so sorry for everything."

He turns on her. He's half crying too. "You think you can do all this to me, and then you can say you love me, and I'll forget everything you've done?"

Her throat is too tight to speak. She stands before him, nearly sobbing. He says, "What am I supposed to do with this? What am I supposed to do, huh?" And all she can think is _I just want you, I just want you_.

He leaves the room.

-

He doesn't throw her out. Not yet. She doesn't fully understand why. Something about lawyers. He dumps all of her things in a heap in the room next to Natasha's.

The days that follow are quiet. They are in each other's periphery but never come face to face. Pepper barely sleeps. She doesn't assault him with her remorse; it would ring false, somehow. The words have been said. He won't have forgotten them.

The future looms: an empty gray mist of homelessness and starvation. Pepper has been there before and has no faith she will survive it again. She doesn't care if she doesn't. It will mean an end to her shattered heart, that breaks into smaller pieces every day she lives in the same house with the man she adores, who despises her. Soon her heart will be dust and then she can float away into the sky and turn into a cloud that rains down on these golden Texas hills. Natasha is taken care of, with her trust fund; this is Pepper's only solace.

Natasha watches them both with troubled, brooding eyes.

So pass two weeks of relentless misery.

One afternoon, while tending the plants in the sunroom, Pepper hears voices on the porch. Steve has come in from the field and is speaking to Natasha. She stops, every cell in her body craned toward the conversation.

"Your sister says she loves me. Think she's telling the truth?"

"Course."

"What makes you say that?"

"Pepper's no liar."

"Oh-ho! Wrong there."

She says pointedly, "Did you ever ask her if she was in love with someone else?"

There is a frown in his voice. "Omission counts, young lady. Whose sister are you really?"

"Tony's. But Pepper's too. She's been around since I was little. She's my mother-sister. You know what I think? She's glad you found out. She hates lying to you, she's glad she doesn't have to anymore."

"Oh, sure."

"If you knew Pepper like I do," says Natasha, forever too old for her years, "you'd be able to tell."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Don't think I don't know you have a horse in this race too."

Pepper can hear Natasha settle back onto the porch swing and open a book. Steve has lately been teaching her to read, and she is making her way through _Our Mutual Friend_ at a snail's pace. "You don't know what she was like with him. It's different. She looks at you different."

He says sharply, "How so?"

"Happy, like."

After that the only sound is his footsteps down the porch steps, and then nothing.

-

There is a clatter of rocks at her window. Pepper looks out to find a familiar silhouette in the yard below. She creeps downstairs.

"What are you doing here?" she hisses, glancing up at Steve's window, which is cracked to admit the night air.

"Came back for you, what else? Time to go, Pepper. California calls." Tony follows her lead and keeps his voice low; the screaming cicadas cover any tones that carry.

She doesn't have to be told to know that he only got so far before hitting trouble. He has come back to try at easy pickings again.

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

He brushes away her words. "It's you and me, Pep. Remember? Through good times and bad, highs and lows."

"I don't want you anymore, Tony. I don't love you. I haven't loved you since you sold me to another man."

No one can read her like Tony can. He hasn't known her half her life for nothing. "You love _him_?" he says, like an accusation, like he has the right to be angry.

She only looks at him. Her love for Steve is precious and pellucid and has no place in words spoken to Tony Stark.

"He doesn't love you. Not anymore."

"Maybe not. You made sure of that, didn't you? Tell me, how did he know we were in the barn that night?"

Now his shock is real. She can see it in his eyes: the realization that he underestimated her; that his certain victory is rooted in sand. He has never actually considered the possibility of this particular ending.

"Natasha—"

"Natasha stays with me." Her tone brooks no argument. "Goodbye, Tony. I can't hate you for everything; you did bring me here."

She watches him leave, to make sure he leaves. He trudges away down the dirt lane. When he has vanished over the far hill, she turns to go back inside. At the base of the stairs she starts violently at a tall figure in the shadows.

"It's only me." The moonlight catches on the barrel of a shotgun, which he breaks and unloads as she stands there. Still shaken from her confrontation with Tony, she merely nods and goes upstairs.

She has only managed to take off her wrapper when there is a quiet knock at her door.

He opens it but doesn't step over the threshold. "Think it's time you pack your things."

Her heart, which is alight at his mere presence, plunges into her stomach. Her fingers go numb. So it's finally happening. She feels sick enough to vomit.

She tries to control her voice. "I'll tell Natasha."

"Unless you're suggesting Natasha move into the master bedroom as well, I'm sure she'd rather sleep."

She looks up sharply. There is a hint of a smile in his eyes. Under her gaze it becomes more than a hint, then spreads down to his mouth.

"Bastard," she gasps, and crosses the room to fling her arms around his neck. Steve buries his face in her hair and holds her tightly to him. He is warm and solid; she can feel him breathing. She can feel his heartbeat.

She leans back so she can see his face. Her eyes trace every beloved, familiar angle. It seems like years since she has been able to look at him directly. There are dark circles beneath his eyes.

"I thought you'd stopped loving me."

"My love for you is permanent," he tells her. "From here we start with a clean slate."

"You believe me?" She can hardly see for brimming tears. "You forgive me?"

He nods, his eyes as serious as she's ever seen them.

"Everything?"

"Everything." His calloused fingertips are rough against her skin, but their movements are gentle as they wipe away the tears falling down her face.

She hugs his neck tightly and kisses his cheek. He turns his head to meet her mouth with his. Then he picks up her wrapper and places it around her shoulders, takes her hand, and leads her down the hallway to their bedroom.

-

Tony returns hours later: drunk, bitter, and vengeful.

The first hint Pepper has is the smoke that floats in through the bedroom window. It is faint at first, irritating her throat. She slips out of the warmth of her husband's bare arms. Eyes closed, he murmurs and clasps her wrist.

She kisses his brow. "I'm checking something." He makes a wordless noise and drops her hand.

The light of the half-moon reveals nothing at first. The fields are dark and peaceful. She slips on her nightgown and pads down the hallway to look through the window at the head of the stairs. A bewildering yellow glare meets her eyes.

Her heart stops.

Fire.

Half of the west field is on fire. Far below, a man stands at the fireline, watching the flames devour the crop. His is a familiar silhouette.

Steve comes running at the sound of her cries. She is already halfway down the stairs, her target the overseers' cabins. Steve hurtles downstairs behind her and sprints to the barn where the water wagon is housed.

Pepper runs to the laborers' tents next. They are safe in the fallow field, though some of them flee at the word _fire_. Most follow her to the front lines of the battlefield, where Steve and the farm staff are throwing water on fierce, hungry flames that show no signs of shrinking.

"We need a wet line!" he shouts. The foreman and some of the overseers hails the crowd of field laborers and they hurry toward the far edge of the flames while the rest run for the well, intending to refill the water barrels. Steve still labors at the fireline, beating at the flames with a heavy blanket.

 _Natasha_ , Pepper thinks. The flames are too close to the house for comfort.

She has just begun to run in that direction when from out of nowhere—the flames, hell itself—Tony appears. He is nothing but a black silhouette, but she would know his shape anywhere.

He leaps through the air, knife in hand, and strikes the farmer from behind. Steve drops like a stone. Pepper's world comes to a screaming halt.

The Tony-shape lifts his arm, plunges the knife down again. And again. Then the lone silhouette stands in front of the wall of flames, arms outstretched. "Pepper!" Tony screams. "Pepper! You asked for this! Pepper! Look what you made me do!"

She will strangle him with her bare hands. She will throw him into the flames. Her heart is awake and enraged as a wounded bear.

He stands between her and Steve. She charges right at him and the darkness cloaks her until she is an arm's length away. She strikes him right in the eye. He screams, doubling over, and she uses his disorientation to hit the tendon in the crook of his elbow. He drops the knife. She snatches it up and turns it on him. He is upright and guarded and twice her size, but she grew up in the slums with only a knife for a friend. She paces in front of him, looking for a way to slide it right between his ribs.

She hears gunshots; then, strange, unfamiliar men in uniform are everywhere, shouting, wrestling Tony to the ground. Trouble has finally caught up to him; but too little, too late.

She registers that Natasha is by her side, saying her name over and over, before she stumbles to her fallen husband and collapses in a smoke-stained, sobbing heap beside his bloody form.

-

Spring.

Pale new shoots appear in the black soil. They are tiny yet, barely as tall as a finger, but they coat the field in green. Birds sing in distant trees. They wheel through the air above the fields, searching for the beetles that crawl among the shoots. The sun is already hot.

Natasha clatters up the porch steps, schoolbooks in hand. She throws herself down next to Pepper, who is waiting with sandwiches and cider. She parrots back the day's lessons, then leans back on her elbows, chewing, gazing out at the fields.

She says, "Looks like heaven, doesn't it?"

Pepper rests a hand on her rounded stomach and follows Natasha's gaze. Mountains of clouds hang in the deep blue sky; on the clothesline, white sheets billow in imitation. Water wagons move slowly through the fields distant. A breeze teases her braid and lifts Natasha's ribbon. They can hear a voice singing a ragtime tune in the kitchen garden at the side of the house; in a moment the singer will round the corner.

Pepper smiles.


End file.
